Fur Feathers Scales and Stars - 3.5

Treego was beginning to worry that Chip’s frown was going to be permanently set into his face. For the entire rest of his call with his parents, he hadn’t been able to shift it. It was no way to speak to your estranged parents, and definitely not the way to speak to the missions hub back on Earth, which was the next task on Chip’s list.

This meeting had been scheduled about a month in advance; nobody could have known that this would have been the single worst evening in which it could have taken place. Chip was striding around the helm. There was a big winding ramp mounted into the wall right the way round the room. If you had just entered the room you’d have thought he was testing its structural integrity. He bounced and fidgeted and asked the pilot, Alex Flicktail, how their trajectory was doing. They weren’t even heading anywhere, she kept assuring him. There was literally nothing to worry about. That didn’t satisfy Chip, apparently. He was seemingly worried beyond all help. He wanted something else to worry about.

Something that wasn’t the sudden revelation that his parents had been lied to about his sister’s death, which hadn’t taken place and that he hadn’t even been informed of the same lie as his parents. Why did they want his parents to think she was dead yet allow him to think she’d been kidnapped by Lezeki? Or worse, was working with him. No, Treego thought, Chip probably wasn’t considering that. Or if he was, he’d have dismissed it weeks ago.

Finally, the screen beeped and lit up green, giving Chip ten seconds to leap into his chair and click the ‘accept call’ button.

“Mission Hub H4 to JCST Amazon,” announced a relatively young bearded human with glasses on the screen. He was leaning forward adjusting the webcam in a dark, featureless room as he spoke, not really looking at the screen. Good, Treego thought, give Chip just a few more moments to get himself together. Every second was important. What Treego would not call Chip at the moment, however, was fragile.

“Captain Chip Puccoon, JCST Amazon receives Mission Hub H4,” Chip replied. Treego had leapt round the ramp Chip had been obsessing over and was perched on the railing down near where it came almost right out to the screen. His view of Chip’s face was totally clear. And Chip smiled.

“It’s good to see you, Dave,” Chip added, the smile still there.

“You too, Chip.” Dave nodded. Treego had never been to one of these meetings before. They’d always been presided over by their head of communications – the position Kernik had recently been promoted to – but today Treego had slipped in just behind Chip as the doors closed. Everyone had seen him, but nobody really seemed to have cared. Once you’d been on a call with the captain’s parents, was anywhere really prohibited to you? Now that Treego was finally witnessing the famous mission hubs conversation, though, the whole thing felt far too … homely … to have warranted such fuss.

“So we saw the video from Aeralis,” Davis was saying, “Good job to you and the rest of the crew.”

“Uh-huh,” said Chip. His brow stayed level but Treego thought there was a frown in his voice. He continued, “So, you might have noticed I got a little bit carried away at the end there.”

Dave raised an eyebrow. “A touch more than that, Chip.”

Chip pursed his lips and nodded. “I understand. See, the reason I was so upset about it is that – I don’t know if you noticed this – but Lezeki claimed to have my sister on board his ship. Now, I love my sister very much, but I’ve never told her that. The last time I saw my sister, I didn’t have the power of speech. I would very much like to see my sister again.”

Dave’s eyes dropped from the camera a little and Treego could see his fingers at the bottom of the screen starting to type something.

“You know, my parents would actually quite like to see my sister too,” Chip was saying, “They never really thought they would again.”

“Chip!” Dave snapped.

But Chip wasn’t listening. Dave seemed to be starting to say something else but Chip snarled and shouted over him, “Because you all told them she was dead!”

Eyes widened all around the helm, accompanied by a handful of gasps.

“My sister is out there.” Chip’s jaw was clenched so tight Treego had no idea how he was getting the words out. “She was within five miles from me! I want permission to self-select a mission. I want to go after Lezeki and stop him from wreaking havoc wherever he plans to pop up next.”

Dave made a clicking sound with his tongue and stared straight at the camera. “You know, Chip, I’d be inclined to let you go for it. You’ve got plenty of experience, you seem to have a handle on the wasp’s motives, and you’ve always been one of our most loyal captains.”

Chip’s eyebrows raised slightly. Treego wondered if he’d been expecting a less cooperative answer.

“The problem is,” Dave went on, “That one of those is no longer true. Sure, you can’t have less experience than before, it would appear that one of the animals on your ship has intimate understanding of the wasp’s motives – how else would the nanobots have got on board? Nope, you’ve guessed it, it’s the third. How, Chip, did you come across the knowledge of your sister’s location? Or discuss with your parents their understanding of the situation?”

Chip glanced at Treego, who shook his head and nearly fell off the railing trying to gesture at Chip to keep him and Louis out of it.

“The information was in one of the files in the library, along with my parents’ phone number,” said Chip. He raised his chin and glared down the camera.

“We know exactly where the information came from,” said David, his eyes narrowing to slits, “We put it there. How dare you go snooping round classified JCST intellectual property! And don’t lie to me – you think the cameras didn’t catch your amphibious little friend and your goddamn nephew? And believe me, suspension of private comms privileges is nothing to what we were going to land them both with at first. Keep better control of your ship, Puccoon, and maybe we won’t demote you to apprentice.”

The screen immediately went black, along with the mood in the room. Treego gulped, producing a ‘ribbit’ sound that broke the silence so abruptly most of the present crew giggled a little. Treego glanced first at Chip then at Kernik, who had taken his place in the chair to Chip’s left for his first missions hub meeting. Kernik was staring at the floor in front of him, or at least most of his eyes were. Chip was staring into the middle distance in front of him, the frown firmly back in place.

“Um, Chip?” Alex Flicktail stepped right into Chip’s gaze and he blinked, shaking his head.

“Sorry,” he said, “Just … er, considering.”

“What are you considering?” Treego asked. He sprang down from the railing and over up onto the arm of Chip’s chair.

“Doing what they say,” Chip replied. He chewed on his lip then stood up. Then he sat back down again. Then stood up again. Then down and back up a few more times before finally saying, “They’re right, Treego. You did hack into a private account. And if I don’t have their backing there’s not much we can do about Lezeki, not with just one ship. Maybe if we go along with them, they won’t do whatever they’re planning to you and Louis.”

Kernik nodded. “Chip’s right. Action at this point would be aimless and just end in disciplinary action for all of us. What do you think, Alex?”

Alex Flicktail sighed. “We definitely can’t do much with just one ship. But how do we tell everyone out there? At least a quarter of them still blame you for Ochon’s death, Chip.”

“I’ll talk to them,” Kernik said, “Let me make a statement as a sort of ‘introduction to your new executive of communications’ thing. At the very least, support from Boinet’s brother will put an end to open blame of Chip.”

Chip nodded. “This is far from what I hoped for, but I’m not sure what better we’re going to get.”

Treego smiled. The four of them may have been in agreement, so not the most challenging of discussions, but this was what he was used to – Chip consulting them one by one so he could hone the most efficient course of action. There were many mysteries left on board, in fact Treego really wasn’t sure he’d solved any since he’d started his investigations. Really he’d only opened up new ones. But they were going to figure them out together, with or without private comms privileges.

***

A/N: Trying out author's note at the bottom for once...One thing I'm thinking about is that I had originally been going to have this as a lot of short stories set in the same world. As a result, this chapter, as the end of part 3, sounds a lot more like an ending than it would be if it was just called Chapter 16. Let me know if you think this is too much of an issue. I quite like it this way but will change it if it makes more sense for the traditional novel format.